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November 2, 2012

Nursery Update – Seeing Stripes

1. Make the room nice but budget friendly. Repurpose as many things as we could without buying all new items.

2. Stay somewhat gender neutral. The thought being that if/when we have baby #2 we would keep the same nursery and not have to redo anything regardless of a girl or boy.

Well I have to say, in my opinion, so far so good! I am thrilled with how it is turning out and can’t wait for the finished product to come together! Here’s a sneak peak:

Originally, I knew I wanted striped wall, and I thought turquoise would be a great color (see inspiration picture below).

The room we decided to use for the nursery already had a khaki color on the walls, and after I processed the thought of painting the whole room turquoise and then having to paint the white stripes it just seemed a little unnecessary.

Why not just use the color on the walls already and just add the stripes…good call Lane. Mike was pretty happy, too. The fewer things to paint the better. After searching for a few more inspiration photos (see below) to help in my decision making, we decided to go for it. Khaki and white it was.

We (Mike) started off by measuring the distance between the stripes and making lines with a straight edge. I’m so glad he’s good at this, because this part would have driven me crazy – even though it is totally necessary if you want straight stripes!

Then we started taping, making sure that the edge of the tape lined up with the spaces designated for the white paint (which is why the tape might not look even in these pictures). As you can see, he wasn’t too thrilled with the whole stripes idea at this point.

***TIP*** -

After taping, and making sure the that it was stuck to the wall, Mike painted a thing line of the base coat (khaki) color along the edge of the painter’s tape. This is the #1 key to getting crisp lines when you take the tape off.

If you have any sort of texture on your walls (no matter what the tape claims), there will always be some leakage underneath the edge of the tape. By painting the base color on the tape edge, you are essentially sealing the tape on the wall with no chance of paint leakage (at least leaking of a different color).

After the base color dried overnight, the white stripes began to take shape.

Two coats later, they were ready, and I couldn’t wait to start peeling!!!

The first strip is always nerve-racking, but because of all of our prep, the lines looked awesome!

Crisp and clean! I was so excited!!!

The whole process, from measuring to taping to painting took about 5 days. It was tedious, but so worth it… and it looks awesome!!!

Other projects worth mentioning:

We also repurposed an old wicker dresser (this belonged to my great-grandmother) to use as a dresser/changing table combo.

It started out white and was used in our old guest room. Since we had left over wall paint from a project a couple of years ago we just used that as the color (which looks perfect). Besides the pain of painting wicker with a brush, this project didn’t cost us a dime!

TA-DA!

I also found this vintage frames at a second hand store for $1 each. I have great plans for them, but can’t reveal what they are jusssst yet. Stay tuned – I’m so excited about it!

We have had to purchase a few new things: the chair (although I had the pillow that matched perfectly), a new lampshade to go on a repurposed lamp and new curtains. More on those later.

With all of that being said, here is the first sneak peak of many…I’m excited with how it is turning out and I can’t wait to share the finished product!